Mark is a federal employee who sees the handwriting on the wall. His agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, may not be around in the near future.
Mark has been looking for a new job since April. His stats aren’t good:
103 job applications
24 interviews
0 offers
Meet Rachel. The Department of Government Efficiency canceled the contract she was working on for a contractor at the Treasury Department in April.
Rachel’s stats aren’t much better than Mark’s.
137 applications
21 interviews
3 letters of commitments from a company if they won the contract award
1 job offer, which she declined.
Rachel and Mark, both of whom requested anonymity to share their personal job search stories, are among tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people finding a job market flooded with resumes from highly-qualified people just as companies, particularly those in the federal sector, are cutting back on hiring. These two events are creating a perfect storm of frustrations, feelings of hopelessness and disgust and personal resilience.
“It feels like it’s a race to bottom. There are less opportunities and more competition, especially around the DC metro area,” said Mark, who has been on administrative leave since April from his position in operations at CFPB. “I know a lot of companies either want to pay people less based on what they are worth and market rates or they want the most possible experience. I’m still middle of the road experience. There are a lot of people who have more experience who are back in the market too. A lot of times when I was a finalist, or one of two or three, I faced situations where it’s either someone who took less money than they were worth or someone with a lot more experience than me. I thought I was in a situation where I’m in a sweet spot. I’m 40 years old and I bridge generations and understand innovations.”
Mark has worked for the government for more than 15 years and has some experience in the private sector.
Rachel has worked in government contracting sector as a program manager for more than five years and previously was a successful executive in the private sector.
“My hope is that someone would look at my resume, see the breadth of my experience, see that I’m adaptable to changing careers and learning new skills to perform at a high level,” Rachel said. “If a person would look at that, I’d hope they would see someone who was a quick learner, but what I’m finding is if the resume doesn’t exactly reflect the job description, you will probably be discarded.”
Rachel, who is in her mid-50s, said the number of resumes coming into each job is overwhelming companies and they are turning to AI to weed out those that aren’t qualified.
“On one hand, it’s a good use of AI. But on the other hand, it’s really impersonal and you get the feeling that no live person is actually looking at your resume,” she said. “There is a way for you to go on LinkedIn to tailor your resume to this job description. I haven’t used it yet, but maybe I will just do it to get past the initial AI scans.”
Navigating uncertain times
Unfortunately for Rachel and Mark, their experiences are all too common. The Partnership for Public Service estimates 211,681 employees have left federal services as of Oct. 23.
While the unemployment rate nationally has been relatively stable at 4.3%, areas with a large number of federal employees, including Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C., have seen significant job loss in the federal sector.
Maryland has lost 15,100 federal jobs since January 2025. Year over year between August 2024 and 2025, Virginia has 8,700 fewer federal government jobs, a 4.5% decrease. And in D.C., for August alone, the number of public sector jobs decreased by 15,200.
Karen Lee, a former federal executive and the executive director and co-founder of FedsForward, an artificial intelligence-powered platform built to help civil servants find values-driven roles in other sectors, said the experience of these job seekers “really captures what we’re seeing across the federal workforce right now — talented professionals navigating an uncertain transition landscape.”
Larry Slesinger, founder and CEO of Slesinger Management Services, said a lot of newly unemployed former federal employees and contractors struggle to make themselves stand out in a crowded market.
“A resume does not have to be an affidavit of everything you’ve ever done since you finished high school, and things that you did early in your career or things that you did more than 20 years ago are probably not very relevant for what you want to do next. It can be removed from the resume completely,” Slesinger said in an interview with Federal News Network. “You’re not deceiving somebody by not saying what you were doing in 1998 to 2002. On the jobs in the last 5-to-10 years, focus on what you and you alone accomplished, and if you can quantify it, that’s even better talking about anything where you can use numbers and percentage increases that’s always helpful to give people a picture of what you’ve accomplished.”
For a lot of former federal executives, quantifying their success can be difficult.
Lee said too often many former federal employees underestimate their own value and over-rely on USAJOBS-style resume formats that don’t translate well outside government. She said federal employees need to translate their experience into outcomes-based language by understanding the kind of organization they are targeting.
“Instead of listing program names and acronyms, job seekers should highlight the impact they delivered — dollars saved, lives improved, processes streamlined. Private sector employers don’t know what CFPB does, but they understand business value,” said Lee, who worked at the Office of Management and Budget and the Department of Homeland Security during her federal career. “They also tend to apply to posted jobs rather than leveraging warm introductions, which is game-changing. Federal employees have mission-driven resilience that companies desperately need right now. They’ve worked through budget uncertainty, managed complex stakeholder relationships, and delivered under constraints. That’s incredibly valuable — they just need to articulate it clearly.”
Avoid these common mistakes
Slesinger said some common mistakes he sees are resumes not being crisp and not focusing on one’s accomplishments.
“In the application process, you should include a cover letter or some way of explaining why you’re interested in this specific job. Too often, they don’t write a very focused message about why this job interests them. Their application looks like a form letter that maybe they’ve sent to 50 places today, and those get weeded out quickly,” he said. “Sometimes people are a little too modest in what they’ve accomplished, and you need to focus on your skills, what you’ve accomplished and why you can be useful to the to the next employer.”
Rachel and Mark, who both consider themselves relative introverts, said they have become more active in tapping into their networks.
Mark has attended conferences and events as well as had in-person and video meetings with dozens of people.
“Desperate times call for desperate measures, so you have to do things differently. I have reached out to people cold,” he said. With networking, there isn’t always a bang for your buck with every interaction, but they may be helpful down the road. That has been the main thing for me. Initially I was taking things personally when I didn’t get the job or the meeting wasn’t great. But I’ve gotten better about understanding the situation. It’s still hard, but you have to have a short memory. You can be mad for a minute, but then have to move on.”
Rachel said sometimes a good cry helps her clear her mind and refocus on the next job or opportunity.
“The fastest shortcut to getting an interview is through a recommendation. People getting jobs are those who are connected to others,” she said. “Being a resume in a bucket of resumes is what everyone is faced with so unless you know someone who can vouch for you, you are in a tough spot. I’ve also started over the last few months connecting with others in my network and seeing if they were able to help with a referral or a connection. Those have led to introductions and to first round interviews or informational interviews to keep a relationship open and going forward.”
Slesinger said resiliency among job seekers is both an important trait and a way to help you in the future.
“You have to keep in mind, this is a very subjective process, and it could be that they picked the wrong person. They might realize two months from now they picked the wrong person, and maybe they’ll come back to you. So if you get turned down if, if you advance pretty far, and you think you got to the short list and had a couple rounds of interviews, if they come and say, we’ve got bad news, we just loved you, but we found somebody else who we thought was a better fit, send them a letter saying, ‘Thank you so much for considering me. I really enjoyed all the conversations. I hope we can stay in touch. If you have any opportunities in the future where you think I could be a good candidate, I hope you’ll let me know,’” he said. “Don’t burn bridges. There’s no reason to the world to do that. Life is too short. Washington is a small town. You will come across some of these people in the future because they’re going to leave the organization, you’re going to be somewhere else, and you’re going to cross paths. So all of these bad outcomes have a good byproduct, which is that you have expanded your network. You obviously impressed people to some degree, by being asked to interview for a second round or a third round before they decided to go somewhere else.”
The post Lessons from the front lines of looking for a new job first appeared on Federal News Network.